The smell of roast tarsk became stronger and, to our delight, the wagons turned and rolled into one of the huge warehouses. The floor was smooth. When we were inside the doors were closed. Then, kneeling, delighted, we were fed bread and roast tarsk, and hot bosk milk.
I became aware of Targo standing over me.
"Why did the docksman touch you?" he asked.
I put down my head. "I do not know, Master," I said.
The one-eyed, grizzled guard stood near Tyros. "She now walks better than she did," he said.
"Do you think she might become beautiful?" asked Targo.
That seemed to me a strange question. Surely a girl is either beautiful or not beautiful.
"She might," said the guard. "She has become more beautiful since we have owned her."
This pleased me, but I did not understand it.
"It is hard for a white silk girl to be beautiful," said Targo.
"Yes," said the guard, "but there is a good market for white silkers." I did not understand this. When I looked at Targo again, he said, "Put her six on the chain." I looked down, flushed with pleasure. When I looked up again Targo and the guard were elsewhere. I began to chew my bread and roast tarsk. I glanced at the former five and six girl, now four and five. They were not much pleased. "Barbarian," said the six girl. "Five girl," I said to her.
But Targo did not display this chain in Laura, to my relief. He wanted higher prices.
After we had eaten we continued on our way, climbing the wooden streets, tied together by the neck beside the wagons. Once we passed a paga tavern, and, inside, belled and jeweled, otherwise unclothed. I saw a girl dancing on a square of sand between the tables. She danced slowly, exquisitely, to the music of primitive instruments. I was stunned. Then there was a jerk at my neck, on the binding fiber, and the guard prodded me ahead with the butt of his spear. Never had I seen so sensuous a woman. About noon we arrived at a slave compound north of Laura. There are several such. Targo had rented space in one compound, adjoining others. Our compound shared a common wall of bars with another, that of Haakon of Skjern, whom Targo had traveled north to do business with. The compounds are formed of windowless log dormitories, floored with stone on which straw is spread; the dormitory then opens by one small door, about a yard high, into the barred exercise yard. This yard resembles a large cage. Its walls are bars, and its roof, too. The roof bars are supported at places in the yard by iron stanchions. There had been rain recently in Laura and the yard was muddy, but I found it more pleasant than the stuffy interior of the dormitory. We were not permitted our camisks in the compound, perhaps because of the mud in the yard.
In the compound adjoining ours, crowded, there were some two hundred and fifty to three hundred village girls. Some of these, not too many, did a good deal of wailing, which I did not much care for. I was pleased that the guards, with whips, kept them silent at night. That way we could all get some sleep. They were stripped and slaves, but, each morning, they would still braid one another's long, blond hair. That seemed important to them, and they were permitted to do it, for some reason. Targo's other girls, of whom I was one, all wore their hair long and combed, straight. I was hoping my hair would grow swiftly. Lana had the longest hair of all of us. It fell below the small of her back. I had fantasies of putting my hands in it and shaking her head until she screamed for mercy. Most of the village girls taken by the raiders of Haakon of Skjern, in the villages to the north of the Laurius, and from the coastal villages, upward even to the borders of Torvaldsland. Most did not seem too distressed about their slavery. I gathered that life in the villages must be hard for a young girl. Targo would have his pick of one hundred of these women. He had paid a deposit of fifty golden tarn disks, and on our first morning in the compound, I had seem him pay one hundred and fifty more to the huge, bearded, scowling Haakon of Skjern. I had watched Targo, not hurrying, with his expert eye and quick, delicate hands, examining the women. Sometimes they would try to pull away from him. when they did they were held by two guards. I recalled that he had once similarly examined me, shortly after we had encountered our first caravan. At one point I had cried out and my body had leaped, uncontrollably. He had seemed pleased. "Kajira," he had said. I noted that girls who responded similarly were invariably selected, sometimes over their more beautiful sisters in bondage. I thought, however, that none of them had responded as I had responded. Targo took more than two days to make his choices. When he did make a choice the girl was removed to our compound. They did not mix with us but, with their northern accents, kept to themselves. A full day was spent in the heating of irons and the branding of them. These were not pleasant days, incidentally, for the new girl, Rena of Lydius. She was kept within the dormitory, her wrists behind her back, fastened with slave bracelets, he neck chained to a heavy ring set in the wall. Further, except when she was fed, she was kept in a gag and slave hood. She would sit against the wall, knees drawn up, head down, the leather slave hood, with its gag, drawn over her head and features. I was given the task of feeding her. When I first unhooded her and removed the gag, she had pleaded with me that I help her escape, or tell others of her plight. What a fool she was! I would be beaten for such an act, perhaps even impaled! I told her "Be Silent, Slave!" and rehooded and regagged her. I did not even feed her then, that she might learn her lesson. I ate her portion that morning, and again in the evening. I had two extra portions that day. The next morning when I freed her head she had tears in her eyes but did not try to speak to me. I fed her in silence, thrusting food into her mouth, telling her to eat swiftly, and then giving her a drink from the leather water bag. Then I resecured her. She had been of high caste. I hated her. I would treat her as what she was, a slave.
Beyond the compound of Haakon of Skjern I could see the compound of his tarns, where, hobbled, the great birds beat their wings, threw back their heads and screamed, and tore at the great pieces of bosk thrown before them. Sometimes they tore at their hobbles and struck at their keepers with their pounding, snapping wings, with hurricanes of dust and small stones, could hurl a man from his feet. Those great rending beaks and pressing, ripping talons could tear him in two as easily as the great thighs of bosk on which they fed. Even separated as I was by three walls of bars, that of their compound, that of the far wall of Haakon's compound, and that of our common wall, these birds terrified me. The northern beauties of Haakon, too, I was pleased to see, cowered away from that side of their compound. Sometimes when one of the great birds screamed, several of them would scream, too, and run, huddling away against our bars, or flying into their log dormitory. I do not know why it is that women fear tarns so terribly, but we do. But most men do, too. It is a rare man who will approach a tarn. It is said that the tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and if one approaches him who is not, he will seize him and rip him to pieces. It is little wonder that few men approach the beasts. I had seem tarn keepers, but, except for Haakon of Skjern, I had seen no tarnsmen. They were wild men, of the caste of warriors, who spent much of their time in the taverns of Laura, fighting and gambling and drinking, while slave girls, excited and with shining eyes, served them and pressed about them, begging to be noticed and ordered to the alcoves. It was no wonder that some men, even warriors, hated and envied the arrogant, regal tarnsmen, one night rich, the next impoverished, always at the elbow of adventure, and war and pleasure, wearing their pride and their manhood in their walk, in the steel at their side and the look in their eyes. But Haakon was a tarnsman, and he frightened me. He was ugly, and he seemed treacherous.